Day Four of Small Press Week, and all is well! Today’s publisher is a little bit different; it’s the non-religious (i.e., mainstream fiction) imprint of what I seem to understand is a large LDS (Mormon) publisher (Deseret Books). They do seem to publish a fair amount of children’s fantasy, and they’ve signed J. Scott Savage to a five-book contract, so I approve. The fact that they’re not based in New York and that the imprint itself isn’t very big qualifies it as a small press for the purposes of this week, at least. Mr. Savage lives in Utah; he has a spastic Border Collie, four children, and an unknown number of fish, although I did ask him to count them for me. This novel will be published on Sept. 12, 2008, which happens to be my birthday. Check back in a few days for an interview with Mr. Savage, and a contest!

Marcus Kanenas is an orphan who also happens to be disabled (he was injured as a baby and now one arm and leg don’t work). While in a new school, someone comes by, claiming to know his parents. Unfortunately this guy is trying to kidnap him, and before that happens, Kyja (a girl he has dreamed about, in a very innocent way) pulls him over into Farworld. Except Marcus thought he invented Farworld. Turns out that Marcus is originally FROM Farworld; he and Kyja had their worlds switched at birth. Marcus is a Fated Individual in Farworld; there seems to be a Dark Circle that is trying to take over the world with dark magic (ordering the elements around rather than asking them) and it’s very likely that Marcus — with the help of his opposite, Kyja — will be able to save it.

The characters in general are interesting. I don’t recall reading that many books in the fantasy field that have a disabled main character. In addition to that, Kyja and Marcus share nearly the same amount of main-character duty; the book is generally in third-person omniscient, and they’re almost always on screen together. Both save each other’s lives the same amount of times; Kyja also can’t do magic (as far as she knows) in a world where everyone does magic, so she’s also disabled, in a way. They form a very good pair — and considering that they’re thirteen, I mean that in the friendship-and-kicking-butt-together fashion.

The secondary characters are also interesting; we have Riph Raph, a skyte (a flying not-lizard sort of thing that can speak and shoot small amounts of flame) who doesn’t like Marcus much; Master Therapass, who’s a Dumbledore/Gandalf type (I presume we’ll see more of him in the next book) who turns into a wolf; a good deal of barn-type animals who tell knock-knock jokes and juvenile riddles (I loved them); and the water elementals, who ranged from Morning Dew (who I kept thinking of as Mountain Dew) who is capricious, to Cascade who isn’t quite so much capricious as a bit imperious and confused by the concept of compassion.

I think what this book has in spades is heart; Kyja is incredibly compassionate through the entire book (although I don’t remember Mr. Savage using that term) and her actions tugged on my emotions often. Marcus generally doesn’t actually invite pity; for the majority of the book, we forget that he can’t walk or use one arm. We see his strength more than anything, and it’s certainly admirable. Of course, on top of that, Mr. Savage has given us a good story; it’s a bit slow-paced, but a good deal of the book is introduction to the world and to Marcus and Kyja’s situation. I think it would be a great book to read out loud, chapter by chapter, even if it is a little over 400 pages long. 4/5 stars.